God Dammit

One of my favorite stand-up comics passed away yesterday. He was 44 years old. Greg Giraldo was, for me, an all-time great, in the same Top Ten with Carlin, Pryor, and Murphy. I was to be dragging Jessica to his Seattle area show three weeks from tonight. I've been a fan for ten years. She was to become an instant fan, I'm sure of it. Alas, Mr. Giraldo has left us, apparently the result of what (to date) has been deemed an (accidental) overdose on prescription pills. I guess we'll never know.

Professionally:
As a stand-up enthusiast, I first enjoyed Greg Giraldo's stuff on various Comedy Central programs (Friday Night Stand-Up, etc.), then as a regular on one of my favorite and inexplicably short-lived programs, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. From there, he had a handful of t.v. gigs, was most recently seen as a judge on NBC's "Last Comic Standing" and Comedy Central’s Roast of David Hasselhoff. In recent years, he has been a big hit on the Comedy Central Roast circuit, destroying his subjects which ranged from Pam Anderson to Chevy Chase, Flavor Flav to William Shatner. He released two Comedy Central Presents specials on cable, DVD and CD, 2006's Good Day to Cross a River and 2009's Midlife Vices.

Personally:
He was an academic prodigy from Queens, graduated from Columbia and then Harvard Law, worked at a Manhattan law firm for a few months before essentially deciding, "screw this nonsense - I want to be a comic!" And so he did, quitting the law firm, taking any day job while making his bones in such esteemed NYC joints as the Comedy Cellar. He openly spoke of such vices as drinking (which he quit in 2004) and strippers (we'll never know). In the end, he'd been married and divorced twice, with three kids. By all accounts from comics of all success levels, from club comics you've never heard of to the Jerry Seinfelds of the world, Greg Giraldo was a great guy.

The End:

By JAKE COYLE (AP) – 14 hours ago

NEW YORK — Greg Giraldo, a stand-up comedian who specialized in rants and insult-filled roasts, has died. He was 44.

Giraldo died at the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., after being hospitalized days earlier. New Brunswick police Lt. J.T. Miller said officers found Giraldo in his room at the Hyatt New Brunswick on Saturday night.

The Home News Tribune of East Brunswick reported that Giraldo had suffered a drug overdose, citing New Brunswick police. Giraldo's managers declined to comment Thursday.

The word is, it was an accidental overdose of prescription pills which he consumed in his New Brunswick hotel, prior to a campus show [presumably at Rutgers University].

What Happened?
All kinds of unplanned freak accidents occur daily in every time zone. It's the self-imposed occasions which twist my mind. We've all had dark moments. By definition, ironically, as a comic, Giraldo clearly had a dark streak. Many who've been through a divorce, a lay-off, any other unplanned life event (to the best of their knowledge) have logically worked through a "logical solution" of "not living anymore." In the darkest of moments, the human condition can and sometimes does render suicide an answer. I'm not claiming that Greg Giraldo committed suicide. I have no idea. I am saying, though, very few people overdose accidentally. I guess we'll never know. Based on what we do know of Greg Giraldo - from his academic pedigree to the brilliant and unique corridor of comedy he carved in the form of his act - it's awfully tough to accept that his death was an accident. For the same reasons, it's equally tough to accept it as intentional. For anyone, it will be impossible to ever reconcile those last two sentences. I guess we'll never know.

I listened to Greg Giraldo's two albums today. At work, I had enough windshield time for each album uninterrupted. Going in, I though the listening would be difficult. It wasn't. Though I'd previously heard the material, I laughed out loud, more times than I can recount, not in tribute but in genuine, involuntary, voracious laughter. At times, I laughed so hard that I drifted out of my lane and in the worst-best case was flipped off by a trucker on the West Seattle Bridge [f**k that guy]. Then, in rush hour traffic, I listened again. Laughed my ass off, again. Not exactly the tribute I imagine Greg would idealize, some working stiff laughing his ass off to his stuff while enduring a bumper-to-bumper commute on Interstate 5. Or, maybe so.

I guess we'll never know.